


reversals

by bellmare



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/bellmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Principles of identity don't apply -- not in the Junkyard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reversals

_Dreaming men are haunted men_ , Sera had said; and oh, does he dream.

He dreams of a blue sky -- how strange, he thinks, because in the grey-washed world of the Junkyard there is no such thing -- and warmth. Stranger still, are the others, the way their mouths curve and they show their teeth.  _A smile,_ that's what they're called, that curious action where they bare their teeth with no intent to kill. It's strange, to see that look on Heat's face, without the bitter edge of anger, without the unabashed show of his canines and cuspids in a prelude to a snarl.

The sand is warm beneath his feet. Argilla says something, and Serph cants his head sharply, takes in the happy lilt of her words and the brightness in her eyes. He thinks of an Argilla in a white uniform with a wild, coquettish smile, with gold hair and no scar running down the side of her face. He thinks about her flesh between his teeth, her bones breaking, brittle as porcelain; he thinks about the coppery tang of her blood, the fear in her eyes as his blades had slid into her.  _She was the first._  She was the first. The first of many, the first blood shed in the counterfeit Nirvana of the Yamaloka. 

(And after her came the others, the good Colonel and Jinana-the-medical-technician; there were the other nameless secretaries and officers who became part of him in the Yamaloka and part of his tribe in the Junkyard. They were the ones who bore the marks of black-Varna's teeth, the ones with the thick swathes of orange across their armour to demarcate the gouges of his claws and the imprints of his teeth.)

Argilla and Sera cheer by his side; _another point for the team_ , Sera says and kisses his cheek. There's no sadness in her eyes, no loss, no despair. She's pretty when she smiles like this, without a care in the world. 

(But where's Gale, he wants to ask, because they are only five, five in this world of salt and sand and eerie peace. Where is Gale.

Maybe he killed him, he thinks, fearfully, like the others, like Argilla and Varin and ...)

The ball bounces by his ankles. He picks it up, eyes it quizzically -- Cielo beckons, yells at him to  _throw it back, bro! Throw it back, you're not spacing out, are ya!_ \-- and he does, jumps high and spikes the ball over the net. 

(What doesn't change is the hunger, the old, bone-deep ache which makes him think of slicing open a demon from throat to belly and picking still-warm entrails from cooling meat. What changes is that there aren't any demons in this too-bright world save for himself, save for his tribe and soon, he fears, it'll happen again. Soon, he fears it will be Dyaus clawing at him as he bites into Cielo's shoulder; it'll be Prithvi's whipcord-arms curling around his neck, her mouths tearing into him because all they've known is hunger,  _hunger_ and there is nothing here for them to consume, nothing to sate that gnawing pain that chords through his nerves.)

He's always had good aim. That much he's certain. Varna hums at the back of his mind, pleased, sated, as Cielo falls back calling foul. The smile slides off Heat's face -- in its place comes something familiar, something welcome --  _competition._

As the ball hits him the world shakes, trembles, reforms -- and there's just red and black and blood and rust and Varna, his own Varna -- and not someone else's, not a Varna plated in black and silver and spitting livid blue fire -- shrieking and roaring in his head, rushing to meet Agni across the balcony of Coordinate 136. He shifts, reflexively, parries Agni's claws with his own. "Pretend to lose," Heat rasps in Agni's belly-deep growl, his weight heavy against Serph's and Serph obeys.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post that a friend tagged me in. ... and then I just had to write it. >:


End file.
